.......................................FORN SIÐR URÞANK..........................................
..........................Deep Thought about the Old Ways...................................
I am Siegfried Goodfellow, author of "Wyrd Megin Thew : The Wild, Wooly Strength of Heathen Ways". Heathenry is a fantastic contribution to a renewed spiritual culture. Ur-Thanc is thought/thank-fulness bubbling up from the primordial depths. All Material Copyright Siegfried Goodfellow.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

McCain Nominates Religious Nutcake

What does this have to do with heathenism? Simple. A Christian fanatic like Palin has absolutely no place in government whatsoever, and every heathen should by frightened by a woman unafraid to stand up and say that a natural gas pipeline is "God's will" or that the "war" in Iraq (placed in quotations because in order to really have a war constitutionally, it has to actually be declared) is "God's plan".

How is it that we live in a country where such lunatics are not instantly laughed out of town to the tune of lots of thrown tomatoes? You would think that Christians themselves would respond more vehemently, because Palin is either an extremist who believes she is a prophet channeling the "word of God" or she is a cynical blasphemer connecting God to her own political agenda.

No heathen should vote for McCain on this basis alone. Palin has dominionist ties, and to anyone who is ignorant of what that means, these are fundamentalist fascists who wish to replace all secular law with the literal 613 Laws of Moses --- that's right, folks, replete with the stoning rebellious teenagers to death and so forth. Should these dominionists ever succeed in imposing their theocracy upon America, they would no doubt have to be, despite their desires, selective in the imposition of Mosaic Law, because I can't see any set of politicians, no matter how fanatic or dictatorial, ever getting the South to give up pork!

There are some people with whom it is productive to engage in debate, and there are other people who are mentally ill. Politicians who can claim that a pipeline is "God's will" are mentally ill, as are Christians who want to impose outdated tribal laws that themselves may never have been enforced anywhere, and certainly not by Talmudic Jews. These are the kinds of folks who drool over Sharia Law and wish, "Wow, now if only we could do that with the Old Testament!"

Fanatics like this do not exercise hof, moderation ; they do not exhibit tolerance ; they do not demonstrate wisdom ; and they seek to impose their exclusivist perspective on everyone.

As heathens, we don't like folks trying to impose stuff on us, and traditionally, such imposition was considered not only arrogance, but akin to an act of war. While we may have been blessed the last hundred years with an increasingly liberal and humane branch of Christianity --- more due to advances in science and democracy than to any internal Christian motive force --- Christianity nevertheless continues to breed, as it always has, such violent intolerance. We could leave this alone and consider it a Christian internal affair if sane Christians would ever police their own ranks, but this is as unlikely on the effective scale as it is infrequent on the personal scale.

Liberal Christians, full of unprecedented Christian tolerance, humanity, love for freedom, and genuine love, can be our ecumenical allies from time to time, but the exclusivist fundamentalists without a trace of tolerance in their bodies --- these are the very same type of folks who tried and succeeded in destroying the beautiful religion of our ancestors. I won't say it was perfect ; it was most certainly not. I will say it was one of the great monuments of the ancient world, alongside other beautiful religions, and that most of its glory is unavailable for viewing because of these people's censorious annihilation of the faith. We're damn lucky to have the scraps that we do have. Do we want these kinds of folks in positions of power? Do we want to encourage them?